Abstracts of Funding Scheme for Initiatives on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

(Supported by Teaching Development and Language Enhancement Grant 2022-25)

No.	Project Title	Abstract
1.	Building a Sustainable World Together: Global Dialogues for Nature Conservation and Education	Aims of the Project 1. To build students’ capacity in conducting global dialogues by providing opportunities to interact with individuals from different cultural backgrounds; 2. To empower students as global citizens by equipping them with intercultural communicative competences; 3. To initiate dialogues that involve participants from diverse cultural backgrounds; and 4. To build a Global Community of Practice by connecting with stakeholders from around the world. Effective intercultural communication and collaboration are essential for engaging with this diverse group. Structure of the Project The Project is conducted in a cross-regional, cross-institutional teacher education programme called “Building a Sustainable World Together: Global Dialogues for Nature Conservation and Education”, where students (pre-service teachers) directly participate in a wide range of learning and teaching activities, covering: 1. Eight themed on-site workshops with three dimensions of learning – intercultural communicative competences, nature conservation, and education for sustainable development 2. Five synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (at different times) dialogue sessions with local and international institutions and ESD practitioners, where synchronous dialogues will be done on an innovative platform called ZOOM for video conferencing with “global peers” from the UK, France, New Zealand, Thailand and Macau whist asynchronous dialogues will take place with the use of Padlet to facilitate offline asynchronous dialogues and enriching learning contents across regions in a secure, responsive learning environment. 3. One e-Learning Community of Practice (CoP) Platform for Global Dialogues for (a) providing a blog for learning and teaching reflection, (b) sharing a databank of online learning materials and assessment tools, and exemplars of good global dialogue practices, and (b) sharing the project experiences and insights with local and global stakeholders.
2.	A Fitness Buddy Program to Boost University Students' Physical Activity Levels	Background: · Research has indicated that there is a relatively low prevalence of physical activity among young people in Hong Kong, with a rate of 31%, significantly lower when compared to other developed countries where physical activity rates are approximately 65%. · College students are at a particularly higher risk of physical inactivity, as highlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO). Factors such as heavy academic load, limited time, restricted access to facilities, and the popularity of video games and technology have led to reduced social interactions and a decline in physical activity among this group. Project Aims: · To enhance Physical Education Unit’s (PEU) Fitness Buddy program in order to provide a supportive and motivating environment for more students to engage in physical activities together. · To explore the impact of the program on individuals’ physical activity (PA) and overall well-being and ways of further improving the program. Issues with the Fitness Buddy Program: · The Physical Education Unit has been overseeing the implementation of the program as a non-funded project since 2018. Over the past two years, several areas in need of improvement have been identified. It includes the necessity to extend the project's duration and scope, enhance project monitoring and explore its impact through improved measurement methods and analysis. It is worth noting that insufficient human resources, such as research assistants or student helpers, indirectly contribute to these challenges. Deliverables: · The project will create a distinctive partner system that builds upon the existing student curriculum and establishes sports communities of practice (CoP). The program will generate weekly exercise records and important research findings, which will provide a better understanding of students’ physical activity and inform the formal curriculum offered by the PEU.
3.	SDG Learning Path Suggestion Using Generative Analytics	There are two main problems that we aim to address in this project: 1. Lack of Dedicated Search Engine and Standardized Categorization for SDGs While SDG courses can be found in existing course search engines, there is currently no dedicated search engine that specifically filters courses based on their SDG goals. Moreover, there may not be a standardized categorization system for organizing courses according to specific goals. Since the 17 SDGs cover a wide range of topics, this lack of organization presents a challenge for students seeking courses that align with their interests, academic background or targeted SDGs. 2. Lack of Access to Information on SDG Trends Another difficulty that students face is limited access to information about SDG trends. As a result, they may struggle to align their academic pursuits and future career goals with the global sustainability agenda, causing them to miss out on valuable opportunities for research, innovation, and collaboration in pressing social and environmental challenges. To address the problems mentioned above, we propose the following solutions: 1. Utilize Generative AI to Analyze and Categorize SDG-related Courses To address these problems, we can utilize generative AI to analyze the content of SDG-related online courses. By employing natural language processing and machine learning techniques, we can categorize and tag courses based on their alignment with specific SDGs. This will facilitate the creation of standardized categorization systems, making it easier for students to search for and discover courses that align with their targeted goals. 2. Utilize Predictive and Generative AI to Track SDG Trends AI algorithms can process large volumes of data from public sentiment analysis, social media posts, research papers, and reports discussing SDGs. Generative AI can analyze this data to identify patterns and correlations, enabling the creation of predictive models that track emerging trends. To prevent AI hallucinations, the predictive model would be trained on historical data. This can help identify which SDGs receive more attention, which topics are frequently discussed, and how public sentiment towards SDGs evolve over time. Based on the development of the solutions outlined above, this project aims to promote positive outcomes by: 1. Creating a novel approach to SDG promotion by developing and implementing a dedicated search engine and standardized categorization system for organizing and filtering courses based on their alignment with the 17 SDGs. 2. Empowering students to easily search for and discover SDG-related courses that align with their interests, academic background, and targeted SDGs, thus eliminating manual processes and saving them time and effort. 3. Facilitating better alignment between students’ academic pursuits and future career goals within the framework of global sustainable development. 4. Presenting students with learning paths that could lead to opportunities for future research, innovation, and collaboration in addressing pressing social and environmental challenges related to SDGs. 5. Providing a database of SDG trends, including information on which goals receive more attention, frequently discussed topics, and evolving public sentiment towards the SDGs, so that students can tailor their academic experiences to contemporary issues.
4.	Enhancing Competency and Self-efficacy in Nursing Informatics among Graduate Nursing through Animated Video Production	· Nursing informatics is an essential attribute for nurses, as it enables them to promote and restore health through the utilisation of advancement in technology. · The integration of nursing informatics into the Master of Nursing Programme through a blended learning approach has the potential to enhance the quality of education and enable graduate nurses equip with the necessary knowledge and skills to create animated health teaching videos that promote good health and well-being. The project design and deliverables align with two United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): good health and well-being and quality education. · This project aims to enhance the competence and self-efficacy of nursing students in nursing informatics. · Approximately 100 students will learn about the significance and application of nursing informatics through a series of animated videos. · The students will participate in a training workshop to learn and practise the production of animated videos. They will create animated videos to demonstrate their competence in utilising technology for health promotion and education. · A pretest-posttest design will be employed to evaluate the perceived nursing informatics competence of students in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes, as well as their self-efficacy in nursing informatics. It will also evaluate students’ intention to utilise technology for health promotion and education. · The project is significant to achieve the United Nations SDGs and facilitate students to cross knowledge boundaries for professional development.
5.	Evaluating and Promoting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals among Postgraduates Nursing Students: A Concurrent Mixed-Methods Design	Background: Nursing education has a role in incorporating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into nursing curricula. Postgraduate nursing students may incorporate SDGs into their everyday clinical practice to enhance social justice, environmental health, and partnership-building awareness. There is a paucity of empirical evidence on postgraduate nursing students' awareness and experience of the SDGs. Objectives: The objectives of this project are to (1) determine the relationship between socio-demographic and work-related factors, SDG awareness, and nursing professional competence in postgraduate nursing students using the structural equation model (SEM), and (2) explore the barriers and facilitators to implementing the SDGs in healthcare settings. Methods: A concurrent mixed-methods design is adopted among 220 postgraduate nursing students with correctional quantitative and exploratory qualitative methods. The SEM is used to test hypothesized SEM associations on quantitative data, whereas thematic analysis is used on qualitative data. A 7-step mixed-methods analysis process is used to integrate quantitative and qualitative data. Two workshops will be conducted to promote the SDGs. Significant contributions: The results of these findings will be beneficial for nurse educators to better plan and redesign educational programs to contribute to sustainable development by including strategies to implement the SDGs in various healthcare settings.
6.	Construction Waste Rebeauty: Sustainable Design through Circular Reuse of Structural Components	· This project contributes to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.5 by fostering waste reduction through prevention, recycling, and reuse in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, with a focus on Circular Construction. This project particularly emphasizing the reuse of materials from demolished sites, offers a practical solution for waste reduction. · Current discourse on Circular Construction is predominantly theoretical, centered on abstract carbon emission calculations and workflow strategies. This project aims to bridge the gap by imparting practical construction and experimental knowledge to students, thereby enhancing their understanding of Circular Construction's design potential. · Our approach involves a research-by-design format, comprising a four-step workshop for students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK): a prospective study, material experiments, design proposals, and physical fabrication. The prospective study and material experiments will be prepared by supervisors and the research assistants. In the workshop, students will engage in hands-on learning about reuse in the context of local logistics and material characteristics, perform classification and performance testing of materials, construct small-scale physical structures, and ultimately design and build a full-scale pavilion in Hong Kong or Shenzhen. · The workshop will be a collaboration with Professor Cao and her students from Harbin Institute of Technology (SZ), involving academic communication and visits. This can enhance the familiarity of students in CUHK with the environment of the Greater Bay Area and promote academic exchanges within the region. · The project's impact is threefold: enriching students' practical knowledge of circular construction, enhancing CUHK's pedagogical diversity and cross-disciplinary collaboration, and symbolizing commitment to carbon reduction and waste minimization in construction in Hong Kong and further Greater Bay Area.
7.	Developing a Course of Engaging United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to Entrepreneurship Education	- Entrepreneurship has been recognized as one of the means of transforming economic sectors towards sustainable development. - However, there are no Asian-, not to mention Hong Kong-specific entrepreneurship education contents or materials that are systematically aligned with the SDGs. Moreover, students may have different emphasis on some SDGs while others overlooked. - We identify the education need to integrate SDG into entrepreneurship education, so as to increase their motivation and engagement in social or sustainability entrepreneurship in various areas. - This project aims to commence a graduate-level course engaging the SDGs in entrepreneurship education, equipping students with SDGs knowledge and cultivating them with sustainability initiatives through entrepreneurial means. - This project will include the development of learning materials, coordinating seminars or workshops, and dissemination of good practices in implementing an SDG-advancing venture, notably multi-media mini cases that altogether cover all the 17 SDGs advanced by businesses and ventures. - This project also aims to turn some of the mini cases into full business cases, in collaboration with SMU.
8.	Inter-institutional Initiative in Teaching SDGs Using a Scenario-Based Learning Approach	· In line with the University’s Strategic Plan of enhancing the global readiness of students, this project aims to develop an inter-institutional teaching initiative that exposes students to global sustainability issues, enriches their understanding of the diversity of strategies to achieve SDG and develops their global perspectives on different urban challenges. In collaboration with The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), students (enrolled in two existing sustainable development courses) from the two institutions will be engaged in group projects adopting a scenario-based learning approach. · At the course level, one of the difficulties in learning SDGs is to decode a changing world with a myriad of interconnected social, environmental and economic problems that present a wide range of possibilities. To facilitate students’ learning, this project attempts to adopt scenario-based learning in group projects which frames different real-life sustainability problems over the world into scenarios for students to critically analyze different city experiences in achieving SDGs. Under different scenarios of real-world sustainability problems, students have to choose a particular city with a similar situation for case study analysis. Students will become active learners to decode the sustainability formula of different cities in achieving SDGs through case studies. · At the institutional level, this collaboration not only facilitates knowledge exchange among students through a project-sharing session but also enables pedagogical research in different teaching environments. Student projects from both institutions help build a database of city responses to SDGs all over the world. This database is developed collaboratively which serves as a platform for accumulating and sharing knowledge with future students in both institutions.